How to remove a file using inode number

How to remove a file using inode number

This post will help you to know how to delete a file using inode number.

What is Inode?

An inode is an internal data structure that Linux uses to store information about a filesystem object. Each file/directory on a Linux system has an inode and is identified by an inode number, hence the inode count is the total number of files/directories on the server. Inodes provide important information of a file such as user, group ownership, access mode and type.

You can use the following command to list the inode number of files located in present working directory.

ls -il

Please run the following command if you would like to know about the inode of a particular file.

ls -i <file_name>

Then execute the following command to remove a file using inode number.

find . -inum [inode-number] -exec rm -i {} \;

That’s it!

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